What would you think if you were shoveling out your car the morning after a blizzard and you looked up to see a man standing on the roof of the back porch of his house, cackling and holding a snow rake over his head like a victorious Bantu tribesman?
Would you say he was crazy? Or would you note that he had just done a great job clearing off the roof he was standing on?
Most important: Would you want him as a neighbor?
The thought struck a week ago Friday as I stood there, laughing maniacally and looking down on the cornice of snow that had just whooshed down from our slate roof. Using the extendable rake we acquired two winters ago, I had dislodged the crispy edge along the eaves and heard the telltale roar as the upper levels of snow broke loose.
I ducked under the lip of the roof and held the rake at port arms as the undammed flood poured down from the peak of the house, crashed off the far edge of the porch roof and dumped into the back yard.
"Failed to kill me!" I exulted, prompting several of the hapless drivers digging out their snowbound cars in the street below to look up.
I had spent at least an hour and a half outside battling the fresh foot or more of heavy snow, and was soaked through with sweat and melt. The first task had been clearing a path from the front door down the steps and out to the side of my wife's car, where I scraped off the windows. Then I excavated a narrow wedge of the bunker of snow kicked up in the night by the plow so she would be able to get out. After she left, I went through the same process for my car.
Now more people were in the street with their own shovels. The sun was out, and I could see Snowblower Man at the far end of the block. It would be a while before he made it to our property line.
I do not know Snowblower Man's real name, which unfortunately is the way of things with too many people in my neighborhood (probably yours too). All I know is that after any halfway-serious snowstorm, he takes it upon himself to clear a set route of sidewalks in the neighborhood. My house sits on Snowblower Man's boundary line: He will snowblow the sidewalk that runs down its length, but not the narrower span in front of it.
Which is fine by me. I make it a point of pride to be done with my section of sidewalk by the time he gets there, though he's been spotted during nighttime storms, an eskimo-like silhouette in the streetlight.
Walking the dog earlier this winter, I saw him about his work and offered a handshake. He did not turn off the blower.
"When we see you out here we feel better about humanity!" I said, trying to keep the dog from investigating the maw of the roaring device.
The first part of his response was lost in the din, but I got the end: "They do a terrible job!"
I nodded, assuming he was referring to those in the neighborhood who take a more laissez-faire attitude toward sidewalk clearing. Several of these homes are chopped up into multiple units — some more than code allows, to the chagrin of the single-family homeowners — and many landlords don't appear to have hired anyone to attend to this most basic level of maintenance.
As a result, anyone walking through my neighborhood can in a few steps go from an easy stride along clean pavement to an ankle-cracking walk through the narrow channel of hard-packed snow crafted by nothing more than the boots of earlier pedestrians. Then a clean stretch again. Then worse.
You wouldn't want to extrapolate too much about a household from its failure to shovel. While some of our neighbors might be smoking a bong and watching the Syracuse game as Snowblower Man or his equivalent takes care of their block, others are beset by age or infirmity.
Someday this will happen to Snowblower Man. If we're lucky, his work will be taken up by Snowblower Younger Man.
And someday it will happen to me. I'm not vain enough to think that shoveling out after a blizzard at age 70 is going to be the same bracing morning exercise it is at 46.
But we should not despair. Though he is not yet 13, my son's reflexes are strong, his ears keen. Soon he will be able to hear the snow as it descends from the slate roof, and duck.
cseiler@timesunion.com • 518-454-5619